Barbecue Festival coming in September

Barbecue chicken cooks on the grill Saturday morning at Johnson's Boucaniere in Lafayette. The grill is manned by Greg Walls each Saturday morning at the smokehouse and restaurant he owns and operates with his wife Lori Walls. Greg has spent years developing the recipe for his barbecue sauce that he hopes to soon start bottling.
(Saturday, July 17, 2010, photo by Denny Culbert/ dculbert@theadvertiser.com)(Photo: Denny Culbert, The Advertiser, Denny Culbert, The Advertiser)

Acadiana is already the land of a thousand festivals. Starting in September it will have one more.

Over the weekend of Sept. 19-21, St. Landry Parish will play host to the new BBQ Festival with proceeds designed to benefit the Yambilee building.

The festival will be held on the former Yambilee grounds on the west side of Opelousas and sounds much like the former Yambilee Festival.

That festival for decades served as one of Louisiana’s premier agriculture festivals. It used to drawing tens of thousands of visitors in its heyday, but fell on hard times in recent years.

Although that festival is not yet formally gone, and is still represented by its annual queens’ pageant, the festival itself hasn’t been held in two years with little chance it will ever return.

Like the Yambilee Festival, the new festival will host 15 large carnival rides all three days, an impressive musical lineup of locals ranging from Geno Delafose & French Rockin’ Boogie to Leon Chavis and Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys, plus many others.

There will be an arts and crafts show Sept 20 and 21, and Sept. 21 there will be a barbecue cook-off, where area chefs can show off their skills with beef, pork or chicken.

The new festival will come with its own queens’ pageant, with categories for children through adults, which will be held Sept. 13.

Parish President Bill Fontenot said the festival was born in response to calls from the public to save the aging Yambilee building.

Parish government agreed to lease the Yambilee building in January for $1 a year for 20 years rather than allow it to be lost.

But although the parish council allowed Fontenot to lease the building, it has made it clear it is not in favor of spending any taxpayer dollars to upgrade the roughly 50-year-old facility.

“Since then we have had a lot of interest from the zydeco and Cajun music community. They wanted that building saved,” Fontenot said.

Lena Charles, a local promoter for concerts and festivals, said as much when she spoke in favor of the lease in January.

“I want to say how important this is for our parish. We have limited space for sizable events,” Charles said. “This facility can hold 1,200 people. It has a stage and real good acoustics. It is worth salvaging.”

Fontenot said he’s heard that same message from many others since then.

“They said that building is a treasure to us,” said Fontenot, who added a number of bands agreed to come together to host a fundraiser for the building.

And from that offer, the new festival was born. “Everybody loves barbecue,” Fontenot said.

The 12,500 square foot building remains the largest meeting facility in the parish, though it could use some work.

Fontenot said this festival, which is being run largely with volunteers, will hopefully raise enough to give the hall a new lease on life.

Jessie Bellard with parish government, who is helping to coordinate the festival, said it should have one other benefit — a good time.

“This will be a festival for all ages and all people where everyone can have a good time,” Bellard said.

For more information about the festival, call Bellard at 337-948-3688 or visit stlandryBBQfest.com.